Viewmaster series

«Etude» an invitation to see . . Created in collaboration with Pedro Ines and Tashi Iwaoka, this mini triptych explores the way in which we perceive the world around us and attempts to grasp the reality that exists behind the subjective perceptions of it.The center of the work is the massive viewmaster machine that is placed in the center of the room. The performance invites the public first to see the room and then the machine itself.

By using the optical effects of the viewmaster machine and later with the help of video projections, the performance creates a parallax view and reflects the viewmaster back onto itself, in an attempt to understand the subjective conditions of our access to reality…

Viewmaster: is a concept created by two dancers and an architect. Heike Langsdorf, Laurent Liefooghe & Ula Sickle created the machine and developed both an installation and a live performance using it. Huis a/d Werf got involved in the second phase of the project: The Series, in which other artists are invited to work with tool.The project is a potent cocktail of issues such as ‘the act of using’, ‘the sharing and producing of knowledge’ and ‘seeing as thinking’.

For Huis en Festival a/d Werf the tool functioned as a curatorial device: all issues evolved from the object, the tool. A tool which helps me think about the ideal of phenomenological presence and the gaps within this concept. Hopefully for both artist and audience a tool to create awareness of perception.

Inari Salmivaara is a Finnish artist who lives and works in Paris. She is fascinated by the factors that influence our perception, both in theatre and life. Salmvaara wants to evoke something personal from the audience but at the same time present them a clear and complete mechanism that can be observed. It is precisely because of this inter- est in evoking a ‘real’ emotion and showing a constellation of agencies operating behind it that Inari Salmivaara was invited for The Series. In «Etude» She uses the Viewmaster as a metaphor for avoiding the traps of becoming a spectacle in the ‘Debordian sense’.